BBC Proms: Akhmetshina, LPO, Gardner review - liquid luxuries

Water surged through this Prom from first spray to last drop. But there was nothing damp or diluted about Edward Gardner’s helmsmanship as he steered the London Philharmonic Orchestra through a succession of liquid rhapsodies: three from the early 20th century; one from 1993.

Aigul Akhmetshina, the star mezzo (and ubiquitous Carmen) who sang in Ravel’s Shéhérazade song-cycle, went with the flow herself in a notably collegiate performance that impressively blended her own sumptuous instrument with the lush orchestration around the vocal line. 

On paper, this looked like an almost overloaded voyage into luscious colour and texture. Ravel was preceded by Sibelius (The Oceanides) and late Tippett (The Rose Lake), then capped by the marine musical deluge of Debussy’s La Mer. Once they set sail, however, Gardner and the LPO excelled in the light touch on the tiller as much as the heroic heave. We heard plenty of fine filigree detail before, and beyond, the grand splashy tutti. From the opening flutes and harps that glitter over rocking strings in The Oceanides, it was clear that Gardner (pictured above) would paint his sea-pictures without murk or mist. For all Sibelius’s hypnotic aural effects as the strings surge and ebb, Gardner’s tempi made the ocean passage brisk and bright; we languished in no doldrums here. Waves broke and faded crisply as the LPO brass added their refined weight to the cargo. 

Tippett’s valedictory tone-poem, The Rose Lake draws inspiration from a visit to Lake Retba in Senegal, where in some lights algae turn the waters pink. Dubbed by the composer as “a song without words for orchestra”, it divides its extensive forces – with a mob-handed percussion row – into blocs or groups that do their own thematic thing and only sporadically come together. Five plangent, wordless “Lake Songs” punctuate the orchestral excursions. The LPO delivered this ambitious, centrifugal and (to my ears) sometimes directionless piece with blazing commitment – above all in the percussion ranks.A pair of athletic virtuosi with an array of tuned rototom drums complemented eerily powerful passages from glockenspiel and tubular bells. Indeed, the lake vistas mostly beguiled. Tippett’s autumnal lyricism often ravishes the ear. From perky brass fanfares to plaintive cello themes and soaring woodwind flights, the local colour here can certainly embrace and entrance listeners. But the prevailing atmosphere of elegiac drift, of contemplative immobility, makes this a sometime stagnant inland sea. 

In contrast, Aigul Akhmetshina knew just where she was going in Shéhérazade. World-ranking diva she may be, but the magnificent mezzo (pictured below with Gardner) never seemed to compete with the LPO’s luxurious backing, or make the voice the foe of the band. The verses she has to sing – glutinous orientalist hokum by the poet Léon Leclère, who called himself with a Wagnerite’s hubris “Tristan Klingsor” – sound sillier than ever, with their paeans to magical “Asia” and overheated fin-de-siècle fantasies of eastern palaces, smiling assassins and androgynous youths. One wonders what a major artist raised in one of Russia’s Turkic regions (Bashkiria) really thought of them. At any rate, she commanded Ravel’s snaking, sinuous lines with utter assurance, the forceful but never strident delivery, both high and low, nicely balanced (from where I sat) with the orchestral scene-painting that makes rather more sense than the words. In “Asie”, the invitation to an oriental voyage prompted some lovely glides and gurgles in the woods, with the celeste (Clíodna Shanahan), flutes and clarinets turning potential kitsch into authentic magic. Juliette Bausor’s solo entwined immaculately with Akhmetshina in “The Enchanted Flute”, while in “L’Indifférent”, with its Wildean ode to a beautiful youth, the mezzo achieved a chamber-recital intimacy without any sacrifice of vocal power. Across her register, Akhmetshina can grip and hold the hearer without strain, even with Ravel’s full-fat sonic banquet served up all around.

As for La Mer, Gardner brought unity, suppleness and a tireless focus on telling detail to Debussy’s great washes and waves of sound. His seascape never aims to soak and drown; each instrumental drip stands out clear, and sparkles. From muted trumpet (Paul Beniston) to shimmering cellos and grainy, growling brass, the ever-changing maritime moods of the first movement – “From dawn to midday at sea” – had their own signature and flavour. Given Gardner’s pinpoint lucidity, Eric Satie’s famous joke about liking the bit at quarter-to-eleven made perfectly good sense. 

But we had enveloping, transporting climaxes as well, with Gardner – who generally eschewed big bangs – for once encouraging a mighty marine roar. In the closing “Dialogue of the wind and the sea”, he managed an epic spaciousness that avoided bluster and pomposity. His storm never felt over-rhetorical, and his calm shunned somnolence. Although Akhmetshina executed her solo turn as stylishly as any fan could have wished, Gardner’s captaincy of La Mer proved again that LPO is itself a ship crewed by stars.

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